The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It • Hacker News Board

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#371

Post by HFguy » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 1:41 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #269

OskarS wrote: post #86

You know who's awesome at Excel? Martin Shkreli. You know, the Wall Street asshole who's in jail now? A while back, someone told me "hey, dude, there are these videos on YouTube where Martin Shkreli uses Excel, and they're fucking magic. It's like the first time you watched someone who's really good at Vim. " It's true: [0]. Say what you will about that little heartless douchebag, he's fucking awesome at using Excel.…

>>You know, the Wall Street ... who's in jail now? He is a seriously misunderstood figure. Have watched his YouTube videos too, not just the investment class but also his working sessions. Sure his excel skills are legendary. But I learned a lot from him about skills, learning and mastery. Merely watching him work not only motivated me. But gave me tremendous perspective on time, its utility to life and how skills an…

"This guy has legendary skills in investing world.."

No way. I don't know anyone that thinks that. What is your basis for thinking that?

And BTW, he's not that good at excel either.

And his ethics...

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#372

Post by acct1771 » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

bauerd wrote: post #362

superioritycplx wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting the video. Please do some research on Martin's story.

Where would I start? I know next to nothing about that guy besides the headlines about the drug price raise. Wikipedia doesn't paint a brighter picture either tbh.

Wikipedia, contrary to popular belief, has immense bias on particular topics, depending on the editors involved in a particular article.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#373

Post by fellellor » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 2:35 PM UTC

What this tells me is that companies need excel expertise and they need it badly, but are rarely willing to pay for it. This tells experts, that advertising their skills in this area is not going to result in rewards, rather it will cost them their time sorting messed up data. Is this a valid interpretation?

Also, since half the thread is Shkrekreli, I predict this will be featured in this week's n-gate.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#374

Post by acct1771 » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 2:38 PM UTC

liftbigweights wrote: post #353

OskarS wrote: post #86

You know who's awesome at Excel? Martin Shkreli. You know, the Wall Street asshole who's in jail now? A while back, someone told me "hey, dude, there are these videos on YouTube where Martin Shkreli uses Excel, and they're fucking magic. It's like the first time you watched someone who's really good at Vim. " It's true: [0]. Say what you will about that little heartless douchebag, he's fucking awesome at using Excel.…

Please watch your language. And like most things, shrekli wasn't as evil as the media paints him out to be and equally, he wasn't as great as his supporters think he is.

Errr....sorry, but, respectfully: fuck you, this is the Internet.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#375

Post by acct1771 » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 2:40 PM UTC

ryanmonroe wrote: post #231

guelo wrote: post #72

People say "use a real database", fine, but where is the visual data entry? Where are the easy adhoc reports? Where are the forms? I guess if you're on Windows you can use Microsoft Access, but that's the only accesible tool I know of that doesn't require a team of programmers or an enterprise license for some Oracle/SAP type monstrosity.

Not having a good data entry gui is the biggest benefit of not-excel in my experience. 90% of the time your data has a real source that's not "Jim's head" and you should find a way to impute the data from that source directly, avoiding the ever-present inaccuracies that come from human-imputed data.

Was the typo to drive home your point?

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#376

Post by bauerd » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

acct1771 wrote: post #372

bauerd wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where would I start? I know next to nothing about that guy besides the headlines about the drug price raise. Wikipedia doesn't paint a brighter picture either tbh.

Wikipedia, contrary to popular belief, has immense bias on particular topics, depending on the editors involved in a particular article.

Hence the question.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#377

Post by swaggyBoatswain » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

schwinn wrote: post #195

swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use airtable, its like microsoft access but easier to use and pickup. Or just use google forms + google spreadsheets

Actually, I struggled making the transition to airtable from excel. Do you have recommendations for training? I do want to learn it, maybe no to a mastery level, but proficient

I actually didn't find any specific "airtable" training, I just used the docs and forums. I had prior knowledge working with microsoft access and database design, so airtable was an easy transition.

If I were to learn it without any prior experience, I would just look through every template they have. See which industries I'm most familiar with. And look at how those databases are organized.

https://airtable.com/templates

They have a really good 12 minute overview though, hitting every major concept though. https://vimeo.com/165624533

I would also learn a little bit about relational database design. This 5 minute video is a good starting point https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvrpuBAMddw

I like using databaseanswers.org as a reference resource. This is a very nice 5 minute introduction to designing a database. http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_models/5_minute_tutorial...

Basically, if you come from an excel background, it would help if you knew a little bit about database design, and relational databases. Its not necessary, but Airtable is practically excel + microsoft-access.

Start with a template, and play around with it. I would get familiar with this page in particular though. Formula and lookups are something you'll use often in any airtable base. https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/202576519-Gui.... This was perhaps the least obvious concept for me to pickup naturally.

If you need any help though feel free to reach out to me I have contact information on my username

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#378

Post by hedvig » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 2:51 PM UTC

mynameishere wrote: post #243

lozaning wrote: post #129

If we're sharing awesome excel videos, You Suck at Excel with Joel Spolsky has to be among the best I've ever seen. Joel, being on the team that made excel, has an incredible amount of excel knowledge. The video is meant to be in the same vein as the You Suck at Photoshop videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c

He's got a Bloomberg console and he's typing data manually from a PDF into Excel. That's just got to be the incorrect workflow. If not, there is room for huge improvement in financial tools.

I thought this too - those earning reports can't be put through an API?

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#379

Post by aaavl2821 » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 3:09 PM UTC

kkarakk wrote: post #319

lph wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 minutes in: the dawning horror that, yes, I'm watching a video about Excel for fun

using excel isn't not fun, it's just that the mental complexity of excel is offloaded to the user. the user keeps track of the various computations and transformations. anything more than a quick check on some data exponentially taxes the brain leading to an ever increasing dislike of the software being handed someone else's excel sheet is an infuriating experience because they're also handing you whatever convoluted…

In investment banking, one of the first things you are taught is excel formatting and how to write readable excel. How to write clear and concise comments, what color different cell types should be (black for formulas, blue for inputs, green for links to other cells, red for weird formulas), how to structure large files (when to make a new tab vs keeping a monolithic file), when to break up a formula into multiple cells so it is easier to understand, even that you need to hit "ctrl home" before you save so that the next person to open the file starts at the right place (the group that trained me called it "turning off the lights before you leave a room")

So if someone is good at exce you can easily understand what they're doing and why they did it

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#380

Post by scroot » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 3:14 PM UTC

rhelmer wrote: post #325

As bad (and deserved) as their reputation is for helping well-meaning users to create a big mess, spreadsheet software provides an incredibly intuitive UI to put in front of users that have the domain knowledge but not necessarily direct software engineering knowledge. I've been thinking about this for years, ever since I first read "A Small Matter of Programming" by Bonnie Nardi: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/small…

End user "programming" systems are precisely what personal computing was supposed to be about. Aside from spreadsheets and maybe a couple of other things (hangers-on from the business world), that line of inquiry and use has been abandoned. It's worth the development community's time to ask why today we have a larger schism between "programmers" and "users" than we did in the 90s.

Let's remember just how popular Hypercard was and what it meant for personal computing. It did not die because people weren't using it. It was allowed to wither on the vine because it never made business sense. And that's tragic.